Professor David Peimer
“Copenhagen”, A Play by Michael Frayn: Time to Reflect

Professor David Peimer - ‘Copenhagen’, A Play by Michael Frayn: Time to Reflect

- Okay, so we’re going to dive into the play “Copenhagen,” written by the British playwright Michael Frayn, 1998. And the overall reason, I think, that Trudy requested a play like this, at this point, obviously, around Rosh Hashanah, a time for reflection, a time for accountability, thinking of accountability, consequences and actions. All of those attributes, in a way, of the human condition. And, of course, tying it up with this moment in the Jewish year. And this play, as I’m sure many of you have seen it, touches on some of these themes very, very profoundly. I want to say at the outset that this is obviously a play. It’s based in an extraordinary moment of 20th century and human history, the meeting of two of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, if not many centuries. It’s an extraordinarily complicated times, 1941, during, obviously, the war, and between Werner Heisenberg, the brilliant German nuclear physicist who ran a lot of the Nazi, or German, nuclear weapons programme. And he was the student of Niels Bohr and Bohr was the Jewish Danish atomic physicist who was, in a way, probably the father of quantum mechanics and the originator of so many ideas which helped lead to this idea of what became, later, the atomic bomb, or the splitting of the atom. And Werner Heisenberg was Niels Bohr’s student, and they were extremely good friends from this, sort of, father son relationship of Bohr to Heisenberg. And in 1941, in September, Heisenberg went to see, he left Berlin and went to have a visit for a couple of days with Niels Bohr.

And nobody knows exactly what was said. Nobody knows exactly what was discussed or why he went. And what I’m going to try and tease out today, because these are two of the most brilliant theoretical physicist minds of the centuries and working precisely with the atom and all the ideas around the splitting of the atom and what could lead to an atom bomb, the one in Nazi Germany running the programme and the other Jewish in Copenhagen. And this meeting actually happened in September, 1941, based on historical fact in Copenhagen where Heisenberg came, with some other Nazis, to see and meet with Niels Bohr. So, this play is really trying to capture something of that remarkable period and this meeting, which is probably, and I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say, one of the most important, momentous meetings of the century, if not in many centuries in human history. And Michael Frayn tries to tease out what might have been said, what might not, from letters they wrote, from interviews, from what they wrote themselves, Bohr and Heisenberg, and another character, Carl von Weizsacker, who I will talk about, who accompanied Heisenberg. Carl von Weisenberg was the member of an extremely powerful and important Prussian family. He was a Nazi, but he was also, if you like, almost a student of Heisenberg working on the atomic programme for Hitler in Berlin and Germany. So, it’s these three characters, but the play captures, primarily, the meeting between Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. And Karl von Weizsacker is not in the play, but he was crucial to the meeting. So, first I’m going to look at the play itself and what Frayn is trying to do in the play. And then I’m going to try and tease out some of the debates as to the historical accuracy of what did Heisenberg really know. What was he there to meet Bohr about?

Was he there to warn Bohr that Hitler was building the bomb? So, you know, to, if you like, springboard the allies to move faster. Or was he there being sent by his father who was, at one point, number two in the foreign office of the Reich, second only rarely to Ribbentrop, director of foreign policy in the foreign ministry of the Nazis. That was his father, Ernst Von Weizsacker. So, was he there to try and gauge what Bohr knew, to try and understand what the allies knew, how far they had developed with a bomb or not? How was he using the friendship, the former student to the professor? And, of course, the other character in the play was Niels Bohr’s wife, Margrethe, a fantastic character. She’s the one with more feet on the ground and she has the insights and observations, what’s really going on here. And, in real life, it was absolute, from what I understand, committed love between Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe. So, three characters in the play, and it’s had extraordinary response globally, performed in many countries, languages, from New York to London, obviously, and then all over the world because it captures such an extraordinary moment and because we can’t say exactly the historical accuracy, either way. We can only gauge perceptions of what happened in the meeting between these two incredible physicists and scientists.

And I love science and I love some of these aspects of science. Today, I’m not going to get into debates and intense discussion about the science of building a nuclear reactor or the atomic bomb or splitting the atom. I’m going to focus on the play and the relationships and this moment in history in the play and the debates around what really happened or what didn’t. Okay, so the play, as I said, this is based on the event that happened in ‘41 between these two. The play opened in 1998 in London at the National Theatre and it ran for over 300 performances. Then it transferred to the West End and ran for another, about a year or so. It opened in Broadway in 2000, ran for 326 performances. It won a Tony Award for best play, Tony Award for best actress and the best director. 2002, they made a very good, interesting TV film of the play. The basic question, why did Werner Heisenberg go to meet his former mentor, professor, father figure, scientist he loved and admired the most, Niels Bohr, Jewish in Copenhagen. Why did he go? The play is written as a draught, if you like, fascinatingly written. That’s also what’s interesting, theatrically, where we see the different perceptions of the same events.

So, you have a meeting and the characters will come in with one perception and then another perception, the three main characters, Bohr, Heisenberg and Margrethe. We see them arguing, we see them exchanging, discussing very ordinary, human things. And then, you know, discussing much more detailed, scientific experiments and scientific concepts. What is their motivations behind the meeting? Trying to tease it out of each other. So, trying to get the human motive together with the ostensible discussion around science. They discuss the rationale between building a bomb or not. And, of course, the war will be decided by whichever country gets the bomb first. Terrifying thought, but discussed. One of the most important meetings, and I mention more about that later. Then, of course, there’s the whole idea of Heisenberg’s, one of his great contributions, what became known as the uncertainty principle. It’s an average translation from the German, but nevertheless, and Frayn tries to incorporate this as an idea in human relationships, just slightly away from the scientific meaning of the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, an uncertainty about the past. How do we remember later?

So, these characters are remembering later. What was the meeting about? Who said what in that meeting? They went for walks, so nobody was really witness to what was actually said, except the two of them. And purposely went for walks because, obviously, Bohr, you know, was terrified that, you know, the Gestapo were bugging his home. Because, of course, by this stage, the Nazis, you know, had invaded Denmark and were ruling it, completely, with a puppet parliament and all the rest of it. But they hadn’t arrested the Jews. They hadn’t arrested or done anything yet. And their debates around that was because, you know, the Danes were semi Aryan in Nazi ideology, or they were hesitant what to do about Niels Bohr, wanting and needing him, and Heisenberg, possibly, pushing to work with him on a bomb, but, obviously, he’s Jewish, you know, et cetera. You can imagine the extraordinary thoughts. And then, in the play, we get the sense of uncertainty in memory and relationships between these two remarkable historical figures. And they almost act out themselves. Are they particles, are they waves of memory? To use a little bit of the scientific debate. Are they drifting? Is the atom, the metaphor of the atom is actually Copenhagen itself and opening and splitting and coming together and, you know, et cetera, frisson, and so on. So Frayn trusts use scientific language as metaphor for what’s going on. They’re based on real people.

Frayn believed that he got it pretty accurately, but I think that’s an illusion. You know, it’s a play, two hours, you know, you can never get somebody totally, obviously. You can create from what you know and your perception of the characters. Okay, so let’s begin a little bit, here. Werner Heisenberg, that’s his dates. So, obviously, you can see he survived the war, everything. One of the most important scientists. He’s born in 1901 in Wurtsburg, which I’ve been to and given lectures at Wurtsburg University. Beautiful place. Went to Copenhagen to study quantum mechanics with Bohr, and Bohr is his mentor and becomes the great friend. In 1924, when Heisenberg was 22. 1926, University of Leipzig offered Heisenberg a job as professor. And he became Germany’s youngest professor ever and known for, as I said, primarily, for the safety principal, but his expertise in the research around… nuclear fission. During the war, he did work, absolutely, for Germany on research into atomic technology, as it was called, and headed up nuclear reactor programme. Okay, that’s just essence. Niels Bohr was born in 1885. He was 38 when Heisenberg came to visit, came to work with him. He married Margrethe, that I mentioned, in 1912, in Copenhagen. They had six sons. Two of them tragically died very, very young. And his work is absolutely instrumental, not only in quantum mechanics, one of the great theories of the 20th century, together with, obviously, Einstein’s theory of relativity. I’m not going to get into the debates between the two, but they knew each other extremely well and argued, debated. You can imagine. Incredible minds at work.

And Niels Bohr’s work was instrumental in nuclear research and some of it, later, led towards the building of the bomb. And then Margrethe Bohr, who was closely involved with her husband’s work, and he would love to bounce ideas off each other. Their one son Hans wrote, “My mother was the indispensable centre and father knew how much mother meant to him, intellectually and emotionally, and he never missed an opportunity to show his gratitude and love to her.” From what I understand, there was extraordinary love between Bohr and Margrethe. The style of the play is not linear, as I’ve said. And what that means, simply, is that you don’t have, what, you know, in theatre jargon is called, the unity of time and space. You don’t have just one space and this is pretended to be realistic time, you know, between nine and eight in the evening, or something, you know. You’re not pretending this is an imitation of reality. It shifts between the past and the present, non-linear. We suddenly go into memory with one of the characters and then another. They try to remember what actually was said when they went on those walks and then forget. And then another one comes in. So, we constantly have shifting voices of memory coming from the two in the play. And, of course, the only thing that holds it together is a sense of going for walks and talking and Margrethe coming in, as well.

So, it’s a pretty intellectual play, but fascinating once one knows the historical background as to what was going on. So, it’s a very subjective world and, in a sense, it’s almost, and I use this word thoughtfully, manipulating history, notions of the atom bomb, because this is what’s being discussed in the meeting, September, 1941. And in the play, Bohr and Heisenberg are plagued by guilt. In reference to the atomic bomb, they’re trapped in this world around their research on splitting the atom and speculating. They’re speculating on that evening in Copenhagen in '41, an evening which, I do think one can say with confidence, change history. The real events are in the background. It’s their imagination and memory at work. And you have to figure out as you’re watching the play, you know, when it’s imagination, when it isn’t, et cetera. Frayn uses some images, skiing, table tennis. Bohr, you know, was a table tennis player, more cautious, Heisenberg, skiing, more reckless, you know, more speedy, the invisible straight, you know, the poker, as we play in poker, you know, betting on the straight, well it’s applied to nuclear weapons, you know, you don’t have to go much farther to Putin threatening, today, Putin threatening, the other day, you know, going to use nuclear weapons, you know. How far does the poker game of the threat of nuclear, whether you know the other side has the weapons or not, and what do you do in that case?

See, it’s so resonant, in a way, to, you know, what’s happening with Russia, today, or Putin and how nations will react differently to a perceived threat or imagined or real. You know, will they build the bomb, won’t they? Who will be first, how, what? All of this is written into the text. And then, of course, the idea of draughts. We constantly get them reworking their draughts. Niels Bohr wrote many versions of letters. He wrote, later, to Heisenberg, which he never sent, but there are in the Bohr archives, in the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, which I’m going to read just one letter, later. Then the language, and he’s been trained, was criticised about this because the language is a heavy mix of scientific language and, if you like, human and more theatre language. And it’s pretty complex in that way, but it got enormous response, enormous audiences, and became a huge hit. I don’t think you ever underestimate the intelligence of your audience, regardless of what the critics may say. Charles Spencer, one of the really good critics of “The Telegraph,” in England, newspaper wrote, “I felt as if my brain was being stretched to breaking point, well, beyond my breaking point.” But I think he’s being witty, here, in writing this as one of the really good critics in England. I mentioned some of the awards that it won. So, this debate remains and it sparked many discussions around the debate, today. That’s the play. And I’m going to just show a little bit, here, of an interview with Michael Frayn, here. Show a little bit of a BBC interview with him about the play.

CLIP BEGINS

• A lot of people think the play is about moral questions, about whether scientists should work on weapons. Well, of course, moral questions do come into it. Before we can make any moral judgments of anyone, we have to understand why they’re doing what they do. You can’t make a moral judgement about anyone unless you have some knowledge of their intentions. My play, “Copenhagen,” is based on a real event and a real mystery. It’s about a meeting between two great scientists during the Second World War in Nazi occupied Denmark, Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist, and Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist. Now, the two men have been close friends and colleagues for over 20 years. They had pioneered the field of atomic physics and, eventually, their work would lead to the development of the first atomic bomb. And the problem was that, at the time of the meeting in Copenhagen, they were on opposite sides in the war. So ,the meeting was fraught with difficulty from the beginning. And, ever since then, people have argued about what it was the two men said to each other at the meeting and what it was that Heisenberg wanted to say. They were two of the greatest physicists of the 20th century because they had begun to establish what happens inside the tiny world of the atom. When they first met, at the beginning of the 20s. Niels Bohr was already extremely famous. He was a great physicist who had won the Nobel Prize for his work. And Heisenberg was a young man at the very beginning of his career, a very cheeky and brilliant, young student, and they did a lot of their very best work together. They had taken the lead in developing quantum mechanics, possibly the most important and successful theory ever to be introduced into physics.

• It was a match made in heaven with Bohr pioneering the physical picture that he could see in his mind’s eye and Heisenberg, the mathematician, the person who could then put into concrete mathematical language the dance of atoms, the dance of electrons, that Bohr could only dream about. And that’s where Niels Bohr and Heisenberg worked so well.

• Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, that he introduced into quantum mechanics in the 1920s, demonstrates that we can never have total knowledge of the behaviour of a physical object. It only matters when we’re talking about very fast moving ones like particles, but, in theory, it applies to everything. And, if we can’t know everything about a physical object, we can’t make predictions about it. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle challenges our normal understanding of the world.

• We physicists go crazy when we think about the uncertainty principle. Some people think that physics is a finished question. We know everything, given enough information, you know where objects are, you know how they’re going to perform, you can predict the outcomes of things. So, it’s really upsetting. It’s really upsetting to some people at a very deep, fundamental level, that we physicists really don’t know where things really are at any given time. That ultimately there is this uncertainty that goes to the very heart of reality itself.

• Husband’s was still only 33 when he won the Nobel Prize for the uncertainty principle.

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, I’m going to hold it there. It’s a fantastic interview with the playwright, Michael Frayn. But it gives the context that I was describing, a bit earlier. In addition, this is a picture, here, from 1925. This is, on the left, is Niels Bohr. And on the right, of course, obviously, Mr. Einstein. Almost you can see the playful, the fun, the light, you can see the joy in their attitudes and so on. And then the second picture on the right is quite a different attitude, much more serious and focused, sombre adult men, meeting in Brussels, in 1934. Extraordinary friendship between these two because quantum mechanics, dealing with the tiny, minuscule, the atom, the neutrons, electrons, you know, the tiny, what’s inside the atom. And, of course, Einstein’s general relativity and other things that I’m not going to get into, now, but an enduring friendship amongst these remarkable minds. This picture has been called the most intelligent photograph ever taken. This is from a conference that was held and you can see, here, this was held in the 20s. And I’m going to show a few of these individuals who were there. If you go the bottom line, third from the left, is Marie Curie, who was, obviously, one of the greatest minds of the time. And her, in a way, descendant almost, Lisa, might know who I’m going to talk about, a remarkable, Jewish physicist from Vienna who worked with the people who worked with Heisenberg and, thanks to Niels Bohr, escaped the Nazi clutches just in time.

And he worked so hard to get her out and got her to Sweden and he did that for 200 other German and Jewish scientists. Get them out. Bohr did it, not with the help of Heisenberg, or anybody else. Then we see, obviously, you can see almost in the middle, Mr. Einstein, one of the greatest of human history. Then if we look at the very top row, on the right-hand side, third from the right, that’s the young Werner Heisenberg. There’s Otto Hahn in here. There are so many, the Jewish, non-Jewish, et cetera. This has been called the most intelligent photo of history, or maybe of the 20th century, I don’t know. Anyway, this was a conference of so many of them who came from all over the world, or the western world, to this moment. Einstein and Bohr were not that enamoured with the conference itself, but an opportunity to meet each other and talk, not just the papers. It’s a fascinating, extraordinary picture when one, actually, thinks back. This is all before the Hitler period, obviously, and the war. Okay, the last picture I want to show is this character. He is not in the play but he will become crucial in the story as I move into the second part of today, which is how accurate, what actually happened in that meeting. It’s so complicated and complex, because we have this friendship, we have the discussions of the science, and this working together, and then, of course, the war and the sides and so on. Carl von Weizsacker, and I’m going to go into his family a little bit.

There’s an extraordinarily complicated story of this family. You can see his years. And he is Heisenberg’s number two. He works with Heisenberg in Berlin in the war, helping atomic physics research towards the bomb and other things, of course. What role did he play? 'Cause he went with Heisenberg to this meeting to meet Bohr in Copenhagen, in 1941. He wasn’t in the meeting with the two of them, but he was instrumental, and he was a serious Nazi party member. His father, remember, had been number two, after von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, you know, during the war he had been number two, director of foreign policy in the foreign department, foreign office department, for the Germans. That was his father, Ernst. And I’m going to come onto them and their family in a moment. But, here, you can see this is Ernst, here, on the left. Sorry, that’s, yeah, Ernst on the left. That’s his father just after the war. And then, on the right, that’s his father, Ernst von Weizsacker, much later. Next to him, is the youngest son, Richard. Richard is the brother of Carl that I just showed. So, Ernst, on the left and on the right, is this Nazi member, high up in the foreign office, ambassador to the Vatican. He is involved in deportation of Jews from France to Auschwitz. He does nothing to stop the deportation of Jews from Rome to the camps while he is the ambassador to the Vatican. And he has all these incredibly high positions.

Does the son really not know what the father was doing? He was put on trial after the war at Nuremberg, sentenced to seven years because of his activities and the deportations. And he got out after three years and some months and, actually, went into a wonderful position afterwards. That’s the father. So, the one son is Carl, working with Heisenberg on atomic weapons. The other son is Richard, much younger, here. And this son Richard is a law student and helps, as a law student, with his father’s defence at the Nuremberg trial of his father. You’re not going to believe this, but this guy, if you may know it, Richard, becomes the most popular president of West Germany. He’s the guy on the left next to Ronald Reagan and on the right is Helmut Schmidt. And on the left is the president Weizsacker, the young guy we saw in that earlier picture, the son, he becomes the president of the unified Germany, first of West and then of the unified Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Complicated, remarkable family story if there ever was one. And it’s important because this, in a way, is symbolic of Heisenberg’s ideas, uncertainty principle, the meeting, what happened there, this family of Prussian nobility with the Von in front of the name meaning, you know, Prussian nobility. An extraordinary history of this family and who they were doing and what. The father, let’s go back to him. When he dies, the father is buried with a Swastika on his arm and in full Nazi SS uniform. He was promoted to be an SS brigadier general. So, this is one family coming out of these extraordinarily complicated times. I’m not going to try and read into the motives one way or the other, but we have to say, how much did the son know? We go back to the picture here.

How much did Carl know, the son, the son of Ernst, how much does Carl know? He’s working with Heisenberg in the atomic research. How much did he know or didn’t he? He has this connection with the family, the father, et cetera. Why did the father, who must have known of the meeting, sanction it, or even above the father von Ribbentrop? Could it have been Hitler? Whoever, sanctions the meeting and for this guy to go, to Nazi occupied Denmark, but not actually meet Bohr himself, but, in a way, send Heisenberg. Okay, so it’s an extraordinary set of complicated and highly complex and ambiguous questions that the play throws up. And thanks to Michael Frayn for bringing it out. Okay, going back onto the history, the first image I want to show is the son of the rabbi, who was one of the Danish rabbis who was told to given a couple of days notice that the Germans were going to come and arrest all the Jews in Denmark. And this is the son talking.

CLIP BEGINS

• My father stopped the service and repeated the message that he had received. Don’t be at home on Friday night.

• [Narrator] On Friday, the 1st of October, when German security police visited the homes of Danish Jews, they found that the vast majority had fled.

• When Bohr arrived in neutral Sweden, the British wanted to whisk him away immediately, but Bohr resisted as he wanted to see what he could do to help his fellow Danes escape. He started talking to different Danish officials, but nothing was working. Then after an impassioned call from his friend, the fabulous actress, Greta Garbo, yeah, Greta Garbo, he managed to even have an audience with a king of Sweden who agreed to seriously think about it. The next day, the king sent a message to Bohr that he would accept all Danish refugees. Completely confusing, but Bohr-

• Bohr came out to the ??

• [David] This is Teller who worked on the ?? one of the great scientists.

• That Heisenberg is working on the atomic bomb for the Nazis. Heisenberg and Bohr have been good friends. Bohr did enormous damage to Heisenberg’s reputation. I heard him say that. I even heard him say that in a one-on-one conversation. I never quite believed it.

• Bohr also told the scientists about the terrors of the Nazi regime and his belief that the threat of a nuclear weapon would remove Hitler from power and keep Europe free from enslavement ever again. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the programme in Los Alamos, said, “Bohr at Los Alamos was marvellous.”

• I already discussed it with Heisenberg.

• [David] This is late after the war.

• And we had the common idea that it would be good to prepare a talk between Heisenberg and Bohr on the question whether physicists all over the world might be able to agree not to make the bomb, or at least not to hurry it, during the war.

• In a-

CLIP ENDS

• So, if we go back here, that is Carl von Weizsacker, the last clip that I showed and that was from an interview done with him, obviously, after the war. It’s this guy here, Heisenberg’s number two, and the one who went to Copenhagen. Was the last interview that he did with “Der Spiegel,” and where he said, well, you hear him say it, that we go with Heisenberg to meet Bohr and maybe convince all the scientists working on atomic research that we should all get together, on the ally side, on the German side, and agree that we should not work on an atom bomb. Von Weizsacker actually says that in that interview with “Der Spiegel.” So, we have all these different perceptions, what actually happened, who’s lying, who isn’t? The truth and so on? What did happen? And we have Edward Teller, who was one of the most brilliant scientists in the Manhattan project, as well, because Bohr arrived in 1943. Once he helped get so many Jews out of Denmark into Sweden, then with the help of Greta Garbo and the king, then he gets to England to work with the brilliant British physicist, theoretical physicist, James Chadwick. Anyway, then he gets onto America and he gets to Los Alamos, round about December, in 1943. And, of course, he’s immediately into the project with Oppenheimer and all the others.

And he very clearly says to Oppenheimer, and all the scientists, that Heisenberg and the Germans are working hard, vigorously, is the word, on getting an atomic weapon as soon as possible. Now, is he doing this, did Heisenberg tell him intentionally so that he would, you know, get the allies to, kind of, gee up, get going fast, and get the bomb before the Germans? 'Cause, obviously, whoever produces a bomb is going to win and rule forever and decimate the universe forever. Is Heisenberg giving that? Is Heisenberg sent by this guy’s father. It’s, remember, the connection to Von Ribbentrop, and the foreign ministry of the Germans, is he being sent to suss out how far the allies have come? Assuming Bohr will know how far the Americans and the British are working on the atomic weapon. Is he being sent, as one of them claimed later? Not one of these two, but another person who was part of the overall mission that the mission was for Heisenberg to try and suggest that Bohr negotiates, somehow, a peace between the Western allies and the Germans in order to fight the Russians, 'cause, by this stage, of course, Germany had invaded Russia. Barbarossa is June, 1941 and the meeting is September, 1941. Or is this a meeting because Heisenberg is convinced the Germans are going to win the war? They’ve already, you know, 1941 they’ve invaded and conquered France, most of Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, and they’re already taking over, you know, they’re marching on Stalingrad, Moscow, et cetera. Stalingrad hasn’t yet happened and the disasters of the Eastern Front haven’t happened in terms of German military context.

So, all of these are speculations that I’m giving. There’s no hard evidence, but there are a couple of interesting things that really are important. There was a place called Farm Hill, which is near Cambridge in England. And, as soon as the war was ending at the end of April, early May, 1945, the British and the Americans found as many of these scientists as possible. Heisenberg, Von Weizsacker, Otto Hahn, and others, the top atomic scientists. And they got them out of Germany, before the Russians, as quickly as possible and took them to a place called Farm Hill, near Cambridge. And they, of course, bugged it. Nice, lovely house, gardens, and, of course, bugged it and recorded every conversation. But the transcripts, which have only been released fairly recently, are quite mixed. The transcripts show, on the one hand, Weizsacker saying to the other scientists, well, we should all pretend, we should all say it was a moral reason, that’s why we had the meeting with Bohr. And we slowed down, you know, as he says in this meeting with “Der Spiegel,” that we slowed down the rate, so Hitler couldn’t get the bomb. There’s no evidence that he did or didn’t. Then there are other transcripts which show how upset they were that the Americans got it first.

They were shocked after Hiroshima because Hiroshima happens in August '45 when they are still being interned and bugged in Farm Hill in England. And they’re shocked. How did they do it? And Heisenberg talks about, but, technically, do they have enough uranium? How many kilogrammes, which kind of uranium? What about plutonium? Have they done this? They must have had 100,000 people working on it. The Germany economy couldn’t take it, et cetera. But at the same time there’s no clear evidence that they were totally pro or against. Some of the scientists were pro and we were highly regretful that they hadn’t got the bomb before the Americans and the British, but not these characters. We’re not saying it as specifically. So, all of this feeds into this remarkable play by Michael Frayn, one of the most, probably, important moments in history. Then, so from Farm Hill, we cannot get an absolute clarity of what happened, even though they were bugged for quite a few months after the war, these top scientists. Of course, they go on to great jobs. Carl von Weizsacker becomes the head of the Max Plank Institute. He wins wonderful awards and so on and lives a very good life afterwards. We don’t quite know what’s really gone on with the truth.

And his father, as I said, was sentenced a couple of years… in prison, sent seven, but actually got out after three years and some months, because, but yeah, there’s evidence, hard evidence. He was linked to the deportation of the Jews from France to Auschwitz directly. And there’s evidence that he said, he claimed in the trial, at the time, he didn’t know that Auschwitz was a concentration camp for extermination. He thought it was a place to send Jews to work. Really? You were the number two in the foreign office. Okay, he was the father, the son. So, we get these incredibly complicated, Oedipal relationships all round, between this family, their friendship with Heisenberg, and then, of course, Heisenberg, father son relationship with Niels Bohr. Fascinating, 'cause you cannot prove anything one way or the other. This is just a moment from just two minutes I’m going to show from a wonderful production done at Stanford University.

CLIP BEGINS

• [Narrator] Stanford University.

• You haven’t come to borrow the cyclotron, have you? That’s not why you’ve come to Copenhagen?

• Copenhagen is a historical play based on three historical characters who lived, Niels Bohr, his wife, Margrethe, and Walter Heisenberg.

• Is this why you’ve come to Copenhagen? To invite me to watch the deportation of my fellow Danes from a grandstand seat in the German embassy?

• [Rush] The play deals with the political history of the rise of Nazi Germany and the question of the development of nuclear weapons.

• [Niels] The Nazis have systematically undermined theoretical physics. Why? Because so many of the people working in the field were Jews.

• [Rush] The play takes its title from the town Copenhagen, which is where Heisenberg and Bohr had several important meetings.

• [Werner] Velocity, range, relations in fission fragments?

• And something about the interaction of nuclei with deuteron.s

• [Commentator] They were great collaborators and great friends until the war came and everything got much more complicated.

• [Niels] Because I’m half Jewish.

• [Rush] Anyone can understand, I think, and sympathise with the different loyalties that they were dealing with, loyalties to family, loyalties to homeland, loyalties to the truth.

• [Niels] Are you telling me that I’m being protected by your friends in the embassy?

• [Rush] The drama is both historical and also personal.

• [Commentator] Physics and psychology come together in really interesting ways.

• [Werner] You looked as if you were trying to kill me. I wanted to win.

• [Narrator] For more, please visit us @stanford.edu.

CLIP ENDS

• Okay, I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened there. It froze for a moment of the actual movement of the actors. So, let’s give that a moment or two. Okay, so this is, in essence, just a little clip from the play. Just to give you an idea. You know, as I said, it’s full of the language of science and the personal, you know, trying to intermingle it. I think it’s partly the style, the way he writes, but also the fact that he chose such an extraordinary, momentous moment in human history to write a play about, sparking so many debates. Going back to trying to establish the history and accuracy. In August, 1939, Einstein warned US president Roosevelt about the research going on with Heisenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which Heisenberg was head of the atomic research area. And Einstein said, very specifically, “The son of the German undersecretary of state, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under Werner Heisenberg in Berlin, where some of the work on uranium is now being done.” Einstein wrote that to Roosevelt and it’s really, really important.

So, Einstein, totally aware, obviously, of the friendship with Bohr, but friendship with all the physicists of the time to alert that the Americans and the British and the allies need to get on, you know, because… who’s going to vie for this bomb first? There’s another important fact that Heisenberg and Weizsacker were present at a meeting of army headquarters in Berlin on the 17th of September, after the war started, 1939. And there, the German atomic weapons programme was launched officially. And then July, 1940, Heisenberg was the co-author of a report to the German army, on the possibility of quote, “energy production from your refined uranium.” Again, we can’t prove how much he helped or hindered the actual production of the work itself, or not. Then the report also goes on, further, to talk about plutonium. And in 1942… Heisenberg, after the meeting in '41, Werner, sorry… Weisenbecker files for a patent to quote, “process to generate energy and neutron by a bomb.” Okay, so historians are divided which way? Who was going which way? Who was helping, who was hindering Hitler and the Nazis to get the bomb? Why did this meeting happen? Bohr, you know, his role, how he did. There’s no hard evidence one way or the other, what they actually did during the war. So, what I can say, is that there was a very important series of letters that were written between Bohr and Heisenberg after 1955.

'Cause in 1955, there was a journalist, Jungk, who wrote a book about, not only the meeting, but about the German attempt, and the allies, with the atomic bomb. And in the book, he went to interview Heisenberg and tried to get as much from Bohr et cetera, and others, of course. And Niels Bohr states, quite specifically, because Bohr was angry about the… he was angry about what Heisenberg had said in the book. And this is from a letter which Heisenberg had written to Jungk who was the author of the book. The book is called “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns,” 1955. He acknowledges that Heisenberg, he quote, and this is interesting, he said, “Weisenbecker loathed Hitler, but had a terrible, horrific admiration for him.” He says, “Every German physicist faced a dilemma that his actions could mean a victory for Hitler or defeat for Germany.” Not much about the morals. He goes on to talk about what would happen if Stalin won and which scientists the allies would work for then. And this is the most important part, which he felt, which is expressed, in a way, to Bohr, which I think captures what he’s trying to say in 1955. “I felt I needed to stay in Germany to contribute to preserving the good as much as it still existed. I had a gut feeling the difficulties with the construction of the bomb would be extremely great.” He doesn’t go on about the morals in this letter to Jungk, the author of the book. Bohr was furious when he read it.

And this simulated the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen to release a letter which Bohr wrote and rewrote the draught of many times, but never actually sent to Heisenberg after the publication of the 1955 book. And Bohr wrote, and forgive me, I’m going to quote this, it’s a bit long, but it’s so important. “Dear Heisenberg, I’ve seen the book, "Brighter Than A Thousand Sons” by Robert Jungk. I am greatly amazed to see how much your memory has deceived you. I remember every word of our conversation in September, 1941 in Copenhagen, against the background of extreme sorrow and tension for us here in Denmark. The meeting made a strong impression on me. You and I know Weisenbecker expressed your conviction that Germany would win the war. Therefore it was quite foolish for us to maintain the hope of a different outcome and for us to be reticent with regard to all German offers of cooperation. I also remember, clearly, that in vague terms you spoke to me in a way which could only give me the impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons. And you had spent the past two years working on this.

I listened to you without speaking since it was a matter of great importance to mankind. And we were the representatives of two sides engaged in mortal combat. Germany was participating vigorously in a race to be the first with atomic weapons gained from our meeting. Besides, at the time, I was a Jew in Denmark. I knew nothing about how far they had come in England or America. I only learned of this once I got to England after I escaped the Gestapo in Copenhagen, who had, obviously, prepared for my arrest.“ So, we can go on. That letter is in the Niels Bohr archives… in Denmark. Why didn’t he send it though to Heisenberg? Why didn’t he publish it? And the archives felt it necessary to publish this letter after the publication of the 1955 book. Importantly, there was a spy called Rosebar who dispelled anxiety that the Germans would get a bomb. He was a spy for the British. He managed to get his wife out, who was Jewish, to England. And then he said to the British, I will spy, I will rather stay in Germany and spy for you. And he did and he sent the message out that they were way behind getting a bomb if they ever would get a bomb, calmed anxiety, to use Rosebar’s phrase for the allies. And there were others as well who had had a similar approach. There were other scientists, other spies.

'Cause, obviously, this was, probably, the most important thing of the war… in military terms and who was going to win it or lose it. Rosebar also, very importantly, 'cause he is a very important spy. He was the one, the first to supply to the British about the V2 weapons and the rockets that Wernher von Braun, of course, was making. And, together with that, was also saying that a nuclear bomb would not be successful, done by Heisenberg, Von Braun, and whoever else, Rosebar also managed to get many, many Jews out of Germany, particular professor Goldschmidt, the founder of modern geochemistry in 1942. He helped him escape deportation to Auschwitz and many others. He was the agent of a major Frank Foley who worked for the British secret service. Foley worked as a passport control officer in the Berlin embassy of the British and helped thousands of Jews with false passports to get to Palestine or England or anywhere, thousands. And he is remembered in… the Righteous Amongst the Nations. That’s another whole life and story of Foley. And in the 1961 trial of Eichmann, Foley is mentioned as the Scarlet Pimpernel who risked his life because he wasn’t registered as official part of the embassy. He was merely a clock issuing visas for passports, risked his life to help thousands and thousands of Jews get out. Interestingly, later, in the early 40s, during the war, he was the one who questioned Rudolph Hess once Hess had made the crazy flight to England.

Extraordinary bunch of characters. I could go on and on. I think it’s enough of history. I just want to say that this is, for me, all provoked by one play. I don’t think you can take sides one way or the other. There’s no definitive proof Heisenberg did this or Bohr did that, in terms of helping or hindering the Germans get the bomb. There’s no absolute definitive proof of what really happened in that conversation because they went for walks. So, the play plays with all these different perceptions of memory of that event, Heisenberg talking one way and Bohr the other. And then some of the confrontation that we see in the play itself. And the fact that one little play, written by an author who wrote comedies and farces, "Noises Off” and other, you know, interesting plays, but, you know, not, like, heavy plays, in a way, or heavyweight, chose this topic in this moment, I think, hit the zeitgeist. And this is written in 1998, the play. This is way before what Putin is doing with atomic weapons now or threatening. So, he chose this moment, in a way, I think, as a warning, but you never know if a play’s going to take off or not. And yet it became a huge hit and sparked so much of these debates and discussions that, you know, I’ve tried to bring out, tease a bit of the nuance out, today. In the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, a time of reflection of, Dennis and I were talking about accountability, a sense of understanding the difference between actions and consequences in our own lives and in life today, which this play, I think, tries to deal with on a human level, not only between two remarkable scientists, but two extraordinary individuals and the choices they’re forced to make, or the choices they may make, or we are not sure what really are the motives, what really is the role of memory in, much later, trying to bring out who said what or who did what?

And, I think, the fact that it’s just three characters in the play and the fact that he’s taking on such huge, enormous historical event, as well as huge, enormous scientific topic, and moments of total historical change doesn’t succeed entirely. But I would rather have an imperfect script which provokes such fascinating, complicated talk, you know, than one which we say, yes, we liked it and we have a cup of coffee and go home and forget about. So, in that spirit, I wanted to share this, I want to get back to the very first point, though. I do think it is ambiguous and it’s unsure who really was on which side because there is a strong argument that Heisenberg was there to also say that he wanted to purposely give a jolt to Bohr, to give a jolt to the allies. There’s a strong body of evidence, or argument, that side as there’s an equally strong argument on the other side. Okay, thanks very much everybody. Let’s hold it there. Okay, I can do questions.

Q&A and Comments:

And this is from Barbara. Okay, thank you, appreciate. Monica Shanah Tovah to you. Mara, thank you, same, everybody in lockdown. Esther, Shanah Tovah.

I read the biography of Oppenheimer and he tells of a time that he invited a friend for dinner and one of them surprised to see a horseshoe over the door and said, “Doctor, you don’t really believe that, do you?” He replied, “No, but it helps even if you don’t.” Great.

Romain, thank you for kind comments.

Susan, the movie’s available on Netflix.

Ah, great, thank you. Sonya, Sonya said Michael Frayn could have written this, graceful, intellectual play. Nice way of putting it, Sonya.

And the farce “Noises Off” exactly.

Q: David, “Did the allies try and get Heisenberg to join the West, like Von Braun?”

A: Good question, I don’t know. I do know that he went back and he was vilified from staying in Germany during the war and he stayed there afterwards, but he carried on working in research and then died, you know, in Munich, I think it was.

Jean, “As I understand the play, the play suggests Heisenberg may have wanted to alert Niels Bohr.” Yep, that’s what I said at the end. Could he have been trying to learn what the allies knew, how far advanced the research, absolutely. Was he sent by Weisenbecker’s father to find out what Bohr knew about the allies working towards a bomb? Or was he sent, or did he go, personally, to jolt Bohr, to jolt the allies, work on the bomb more, to get it before the Germans. That’s the debate. Jean, thank you.

Q: Romain, “Is it possible that there’s constant uncertainty between good and evil?”

A: Yes, I think, absolutely, Banquo’s ghost, yet again. You know, every light has its shadow. We are human nature, good and evil tussle in all of us. Some of us, evil takes over. Some of us, good mixtures between the two, The uncertainty principle, and what Frayn tries to do in the play, is take the metaphor of the scientific notion of uncertainty principle and put it into human nature. The play between good and evil in all of us.

Q: David, “Was Weizsacker responsible for stopping the Nazis from destroying Rome and stealing its artefacts?”

A: Oh, I’m not sure. We’d have to check that, David, thank you.

Grandma Lorna, congratulations on being grandma, thank you.

Michael, “The most intelligent picture was taken at the fifth survey conference in Brussels, October, 1927.” Thanks for that. Yeah, it was, if I remember this, the pharmaceutical company survey. Anyway, they organised it.

Petersburg, “Heisenberg made a quick calculation of the amount of uranium needed for the bomb, made an error thinking the amount is 100 times greater, but the whole project aside is unrealistic. He had said nothing to do with any moral consideration one way or the other.” Absolutely, what you’re saying. And that is dealt with in the play and it also shows in the Farm Hill, the farmhouse recorded transcripts from in 1945 after the 10 most important German atomic physicists were interned there and bugged. And Heisenberg talked about the calculation, you know, what calculations did Americans have for Hiroshima? And there is that in the transcript. So, as you’re saying, that is part of the debate that it had nothing to do with moral for Heisenberg, but it was because he calculated the amount of uranium needed for a bomb inaccurately. It is not conclusive, but part of the debate. Rose, thank you.

Q: Barbara, “How did Frayn get to the subject?”

A: Oh, there’s a long story, but he became fascinated and obsessed and, I think, to his credit, totally, that he chose this and made it accessible and can stimulate such debate from a play. I love it when theatre can do that. It can be political. it can be anything that stimulates.

Q: Jack, “Doesn’t it seem more likely that the Germans, after the war, had an incentive to dissemble about their roles in ?

A: Absolutely. And that’s what we saw, that brief interview with Weisbecker, where he says, well, we try to get all the scientists in the world to say none of us will work on a bomb. Ridiculous, you’re working under the Nazis in Berlin, but you’re going to say to Hitler, we want to get the peace agreement amongst all the scientists in the world?

Sheila, thank you, okay, for your comment, Stuart, that’s very kind. Ivanovich, thank you. Sarah, Shanah Tovah, thank you.

Alfred, a comment regarding the dramatic use of three characters such as Sartre’s "No Exit.” That’s fantastic, I love that play. Sartre’s play “No Exit,” brilliant. And yes, there is no real exit for these guys. In a way, I think, Frayn, it’s fantastic you make that point, Alfred and Yona, because, in a way, they’re trapped in their memory. I mean, Sartre sets it up as being trapped in the room, but, you know, but in a way, they’re trapped in their memory and trying to show different interpretations of the meeting and can’t escape that memory of that meeting because of the personal friendship and the magnitude of what they’re discussing.

Erin, thanks. Myrna, thank you, kindly.

Sonya, “I was grateful for the character of Margrethe.” Yes, I didn’t have time to really go into it in this presentation, but she’s a fantastic character, as you say. She translates dense science into plain English, as you say.

Michael, thank you. “It’s a play words, the uncertainty principle.” Absolutely.

Gita, “Saw the play in London.” Ah, thanks. Max, thank you. The play “Heisenberg,” I know of it but I haven’t had the chance to read it, but thank you. It’s also wonderfully ambiguous and that’s what theatre must do. It must leave us ambiguous, unsure insights, contradictions, paradox, human nature, not say, you know, goodies and baddies, cowboy and Indian stuff.

Barbara, thank you. Judy, okay, thanks so much.

Q: “As a literary analysis, anybody tabulated the number of moral written or spoken comments of Heisenberg versus Bohr?”

A: No, that’s interesting. I dunno, no haven’t found it.

Nina, “The book 'Hitler’s scientists’ the transcripts of the actual sayings, is highly recommended.” Yes, Heisenberg was a loyal German, yeah. So, there is that book. There is Jungk’s book. There are quite a few. There’s Foley’s book, which is fascinating and important, as well. One of the most important spies. He was also responsible for helping organise the attack in Norway to destroy that the Germans could not get the heavy water, which would be essential for the bomb. So, Foley is fascinating, ‘cause he touches all these different bases and he also helped thousands of Jews escape by being the visa officer in the British embassy in Berlin.

Okay, so thank you very much, everybody. Shanah Tovah, have a great and peaceful weekend, and in the spirit of the week coming… calm and happiness to everybody. And thanks, again, Emily, so much.